Specific IP address to provide warning of potential name collisions
September 1, 2014
Rodrigo de la Parra, ICANN Regional Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean.
On August 1st, ICANN announced the approval of the Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework. This framework has been designed to help mitigate the impact of name collisions within the Domain Name System (DNS).
This framework encourages registry operators to apply a technique known as “Controlled Interruption,” which can alert system administrators of potential problems within their networks. Specifically, an IPv4 address (127.0.53.53) will appear in system logs, allowing administrators to quickly troubleshoot any issues.
“Collisions often appear when a conflict occurs between a full domain name and a similar domain name which is being used within a private network. When this happens, users might be directed to a website they did not wish to visit, or they might be presented with an error message.”
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Akram Atallah, ICANN Generic Domains Division President, noted that we now have a well-specified methodology to mitigate name collisions affecting delegated top level domain names, including a procedure that will allow registries to unblock selected second level domain names included on their lists. Developed with the multistakeholder community, these operational processes will help guarantee Domain Name System security.
ICANN will provide information to the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), and it will continue to work with this organization to determine whether a new policy dealing with long term name collision management should be developed.
For more information on name collisions, please visit: https://www.icann.org/namecollision.